This is the first in a series of blog posts as I prepare my tiny apartment and myself for a disaster.

The recent events in Japan have made it clear to me that my reserve food stores are very, very low. I could last a couple of days but not for long if an event prevented me from shopping.

I went to the dollar store this week armed with $15 to see what my money could provide me. I bought:
8 cans of Campbell’s soup
2 cans of Del Monte crushed pineapple
2 50 foot Reynolds aluminum foil (great for cooking on BBQ if needed.)

I spent a total of $12 plus tax for the foil.

I plan to take $10 per week from the grocery budget to the dollar type store and see what I can find for my emergency food supplies. Yes, I am a name brand snob. These are products I know and use all the time, some of the off label brands are brands of which I have never heard. So I will start trying one a week to see it I like it, I can add it to the emergency kit the next time. I am also trying to make three nutritious meals and a snack a day.

Now I have come up with a creative solution to the storage of these products, I think. If I move the couch in my living room for ward two feet I can place totes there for storage. Two totes on top of each other reach the height of the couch back and I can place four totes total behind the couch. I plan to put a board (stained to look like a table) on top of the totes and place a couple nick knacks there. Well, at least it is an idea for storage, let’s see if it will work.

I live in 700 square feet of space with only one closet (in the bedroom) which is currently holding items I am moving from my small storage locker. I am slowly going through the storage stuff and I plan to get rid of the locker by the end of June, at the latest. The locker is 5x5 so really it is just a closet and I have had a deal of $10 a month because my mom had a locker there, too. Of the 13 boxes I have sorted so far I have kept only 4 (repacked) boxes. Most of the stuff I kept are items from my grandmothers estate. If I have not used the stuff in the locker in 5 years, then I know most of it will be donated, recycled or tossed. I believe there are 4 boxes of books that I will take to the book store for credit as soon as they are brought down.

The $2 plus change I did not use for this challenge: the two dollar bills will go to my emergency fund of $1 bills and the change went to my change challenge. I counted the change over the weekend and I have almost $80 in change. In May, I will take the change to the branch of my bank that has the free coin star machine and make a deposit into my emergency fund. I usually save about $330 a year in coins so this is less than normal.

I made a list over the weekend of items I need as part of my emergency kit that I currently do not have so I will begin looking at the dollar type stores and sales to slowly grow my kit.